After my son started playing Rock ‘n’ Diamonds, I really starting hankering to play Boulderdash. Unfortunately, I have not had a Commodore 64 or 128 for over 15 years. However, about 10 years ago I found C-64 emulators avilable on the Internet. With a little searching I came across one that works pretty good. It’s called CCS64 and can be found at http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/. The page talks about the C-64 and has many links to other sites with information and software for the emulators. Unfortunately, the software links I tried went to a site where you had to register and write a review or visit some other site before you could download anything. I then found the site www.c64.com where I was able to download Boulderdash.
The emulator has an installation program so it’s easy to get running. I installed it to my Vista machine with no problems. When started, it takes you to a C-64 Ready prompt. I copied the Boulderdash file to the CCS64 folder to make it easy for the program to find and this seemed to be a good choice. Besides giving you many options from the program menu to setup video, audio, and controllers, you can also have CCS64 find C-64 software files to run from the File | Load and Run… menu option. This brought up a window where I could choose my software file. CCS64 then enters the appropriate C-64 commands to run the software (C-64 is all command line for those folks used to point and click). With the video option I was able to make the screen 3x normal; there are also options for screen resolutions. The audio picks up your primary audio driver or you can select one available. The coolest thing was with the controller. Boulderdash only works with a joystick, so I could not play with the keyboard. So I picked up my trusty XBox 360 wireless controller, calibrated it in the CCS64 program, and I was cruising around picking up diamonds in Boulderdash in no time.
For all the old timers out there that had a C-64 or 128 and want to play an old favorite or two, CCS64 plus the freely available game files is a great way to do it.